Ten years ago, people from outside Guangdong who worked in Guangdong could accurately find their landlord on the street, and the logo was a string of heavy keys pinned to their waists. Today, entering the new home improvement scene, whether it is a housing agent or an old landlord, it is almost rare to bring a key.
In today's new homes in big cities, smart locks have replaced keys as standard. According to Aowei Cloud Network (AVC) data, the sales volume of China's smart door lock market in 2021 was 4.58 million sets, an increase of 31.4% year-on-year. The logic of growth comes from two aspects, one is that the standard proportion of real estate hardcover smart locks is getting higher and higher, which has spawned the demand for smart locks.
The intelligence of the lock, for the landlord, does not have to send the key thousands of miles, do not have to change the tenant to change the lock together; for the tenant, it is added a layer of security and convenience protection, and there is no need to worry about forgetting or losing the key.
Second, in the scene of own families, security is also the primary foundation of the home Internet of Things. According to the data of the "2020 Smart Home Ecological Development White Paper", users have the highest demand for home security, intelligent voice, and intelligent network products, accounting for 92%, 83%, and 71% respectively, promoting the consumption growth of smart door locks.
Soaring demand can also be reflected in corporate sales. For example, according to the smart door lock brand "Kaadas Cadiz", the company's omni-channel shipments in 2021 exceeded 2 million sets, at the same time, the pace of financing and market expansion is almost the same frequency forward, 36Kr learned that following the completion of nearly 100 million US dollars of strategic financing in March last year, "Kaadas Cadiz" has recently received another C round of 600 million yuan financing.
In this round of financing, the leading investor is the Asian Investment Limited Partnership Fund (hereinafter referred to as the "Asian Investment Fund"), and Cornerstone Capital, Tongchuang Weiye, Yijian Investment and Morgan Stanley China Fund are the follow-up investments, of which Tongchuang Weiye has been co-invested for the second time. In addition, Kaadas was awarded a comprehensive credit of RMB 1 billion from six major banks: China Merchants Bank, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Bank of Shanghai.
In fact, smart locks have a long history in China, and today's smart door lock industry also presents three camps of professional lock brands, Internet brands and cross-border brands. Then, in the fierce competition, Cadiz can still obtain large amounts of financing, and many institutions favor. So, in the fierce competition, how can professional lock-up companies embrace technology and strengthen their moats? What conditions should a smart door lock that truly meets the needs of consumers have? What factors are needed for smart home branding?
Perhaps, you can see a little bit of it in Cadiz's meticulous craftsmanship of a good lock.
First, from the consumer insight of a lock
It is not difficult to make a smart lock, and it is difficult to make a good smart lock. On the one hand, Internet companies in the process of ecological construction, in the way of low prices and bound traffic, send smart locks into thousands of households, in order to establish a longer-term sticky relationship with consumers, on the other hand, the "bad currency opportunities" brought by the incremental market also allow thousands of OEM small factories to join the industry melee, and double-digit cottage goods can be seen everywhere on Pinduoduo.
According to the analysis of the Head Leopard Research Institute, the current competitive landscape of smart locks is still relatively scattered. Mainly because in the absence of monopoly enterprises, there is a continuous increase in new entrants, in addition to the professional smart lock brand with Kaidis as an example, Huawei, Xiaomi, Ali and other Internet brands in the ecological chain and TCL, Midea, Haier and other home appliance giants have targeted this ever-expanding "household cake".
Players in these three camps have their own advantages, such as Internet companies themselves have traffic blessings, which are relatively powerful in channels and distribution; the brand effect formed by home appliance giants in the past few decades can also attract some consumers, and the brand stickiness between them and customers is the primary factor for early adopters; but in terms of quantity and products, professional door lock companies still dominate, and new players in the market are still not enough to pose a threat. At present, the total number of professional and electronic lock enterprises has reached 84.6%, and the total proportion of science and technology and Internet enterprises is only 10.8%.
However, with the intensification of competition, it is not easy to break through the still fierce market competition. A good smart lock is not easy to build, especially for consumer electronics products that need scientific and technological attributes, capital, research and development, manufacturing, channels, brands, services, etc. are indispensable, which are key elements worth considering. Defined by the difference between inner volume and innovation, the real breakthrough point is whether it can create unique market opportunities under the premise of truly finding consumer demand.
The premise of understanding consumers is to go into the consumer. After the start of the "Thousand Locks War" in 2015, the smart locks also caused consumers to question the safety, after-sales service and intelligence of smart door locks. This is because in the early stage of smart locks entering the market, when most manufacturers are still in the technology research and development is not yet mature, the offensive method of "price war + marketing" is already the most direct means for many manufacturers to open the market.
In fact, the material and research and development cost of the smart door lock itself is higher than that of the traditional mechanical door lock, and its intelligent completion requires double matching of hardware and software, so the average price of the mainstream smart door lock is usually about 2,000 yuan, and the inferior currency will pull the price down to less than 1,000 yuan, giving priority to the low price to seize the consumer's mind, but the safety and reliability of the door lock equipment, the degree of home networking may become a problem, and the after-sales service of the product cannot be guaranteed.
Cadiz is one of the earliest smart lock companies in China, and in the process of growing together with the industry, it can also hear the voice closest to the gunfire. In 2013, Cadiz officially began to enter the retail market, and in 2015, when the C-end market was still not fully developed, Cadiz officially formed a team to enter the engineering market. This determination comes from Cadiz's long-term observation of the market, because the real estate hardcover smart lock market at that time had a stronger rigid demand for smart door locks than the C-end.
In addition, in order to enhance consumer trust, after-sales must also keep up. In 2017, Cadiz pledged a three-year warranty on Cadiz smart lock products sold through official retail channels. 1 hour of fast on-site service, professional after-sales personnel immediate response, 24/7 after-sales service hotline, tens of thousands of terminal service outlets, since then, Cadiz has become the first brand in the industry to propose "three-year warranty" service, which also makes up for the previous industry price war was pulled down consumer expectations.
What is more noteworthy is that compared with 10 years ago, the main consumer groups have changed, and the post-90s generation has begun to take the stage to grasp the decision-making power of household purchasing power. All walks of life are innovating and iterating in anticipation of impressing young people, and professional lock-up enterprises are no exception.
Cadiz's play style is the same, still into the young consumer. For example, in terms of product design, the design concept is to be stylish and simple, with a sense of technology.
In 2022, Cadiz launched the 2022 Spring Creative Solicitation Activity with the College Awards of the China College Advertising Art Festival, and 1830 colleges and universities and 5000+ departments such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University, Fudan University conducted creative solicitations, insight into the understanding and attitude of young people about smart locks, which is the first and only brand in the smart lock industry to join hands with the college award to enter the campus.
In addition, on the channel, Cadiz went deep into mainstream social media platforms, such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, B station, Douyin, etc., to plant grass For young users. The decision to keep up with market demand is the core of impressing consumers, and therefore, even in today's changing consumer groups, Cadiz still occupies the industry TOP list for many years, and in 2021, the Cadiz brand ranks among the TOP 1 of Tmall smart door lock transactions.
Second, the bottom layer of research and development creates a lock
Chang Jing, the founder of Stone Technology, once said in an internal letter, "The development stage of the enterprise will be divided into 0-1 and 1-N. From 0-1, enterprises only need to find a unique value point to cut into, 1-N stage needs to extend the window period of short-term uniqueness, but also to start laying out long-term unique value, so that the company can be sustainable. ”
From 0 to 1, the test is product innovation, including product technology research and development, supply chain level. From 1 to n, the team's comprehensive ability is tested, including multi-party games such as manufacturing, channel distribution, and brand building.
Let's look at the product force stage from 0 to 1. In 2009, Su Zhiyong, the founder of Kaadas, who was born in the professional lock industry, analyzed the competitive pattern of the door lock market at that time, and believed that smart door locks under the digital trend were an emerging format with great incremental and imaginative space. At that time, most of the players in the market were from the hardware industry, or the temptation of the small shares of Internet companies, which allowed Su Zhiyong to see the opportunity to create a new brand.
Su Zhiyong has been in the lock industry since 1986, and it can be said that he has witnessed the industry changes from mechanical locks to smart locks. The 36 years of deep cultivation of locks have enabled Su Zhiyong and his team to quickly make decisions on industry dynamics.
After starting its own business, the first thing Cadiz did was to step up research and development. This is because smart locks have corresponding requirements for different key areas such as machinery, transmission, structure, hardware manufacturing, electronics, wireless communications, servers and Apps, and the difficulty of research and development is much higher than that of traditional mechanical locks. For example, in order to make the software and hardware of the smart lock better fit, it is often necessary to make secondary development on the basis of the existing software and hardware products.
To this day, Cadiz still invests a lot of R&D costs every year, and R&D investment accounts for nearly 10% of revenue. In terms of R&D capabilities, Cadiz has three major R&D centers, hundreds of R&D teams, gathered international and domestic well-known electronics, structure, industrial design, testing and other R & D personnel, and reached more than 300 patents, can independently develop all categories of automatic lock body.
In 2016, Cadiz launched the first domestic push-pull smart lock explosive K7, and soon reached the first place in the Taobao crowdfunding category. K7 was the first domestic sliding smart lock at that time, its breakthrough is the use of automatic lock body, which is different from the traditional mechanical lock body needs manual operation to reverse the lock, in simple terms, as long as the door is closed, the tongue and frame contact with the main lock tongue will automatically lock, no longer have to worry about the door to forget to lock.
In addition, the K7 full lock is composed of more than 200 parts, using high-quality alloy and steel casting automatic lock body, the total weight of the whole lock is 7KG, which is 2 times that of the ordinary push-pull lock on the market, which is much higher than the industry standard quality.
The explosion of K7 is inseparable from manufacturing, and the manufacturing ability of Cadiz is almost the same frequency as that of research and development. Today, Cadiz has three large-scale manufacturing bases in the country: Dongguan, Zhejiang and Zhuhai. Drawing on Foxconn Industrial Interconnection 4.0, Cadiz has advanced CNC CNC machine tools, fully automated production lines and professional product testing laboratories, and is the only smart lock industry chain company in China.
This breakthrough product helped Kaidishi tear open the market, and then, Kaidis increased its brand strategy and investment, and in March of the following year, it officially signed Liu Tao, who had just starred in "Ode to Joy", as a brand spokesperson, and advertised on CCTV, airports, high-speed rail and other channels. During this period, Cadiz truly realized the transition from the 0 to 1 stage and to the 1 to n stage.
Coming to the new arena, what remains unchanged is the long-term technical polishing of Cadiz. At this stage, Cadiz is still constantly improving in the research and development of the lock body, such as the unique advantage of the true automatic lock body, the motor is built into the lock body, abandoning the mechanical lock body noise, slow operation, lock body caton, poor unlocking experience and other drawbacks, bringing users the advantages of opening the door quickly and closing the door automatically locking.
The excellence of R&D and manufacturing has built a deep moat of Cadiz. Today, in the face of a new competitive landscape, Cadiz has also begun to jump out of the circle, showing different industry roles.
Third, comprehensive channel integration opens a lock
From the perspective of today's product channels, it cannot be described only as "diversified", but also comprehensive.
In China, Cadiz has online Tmall, JD.com, Suning Tesco and other toC channels, and is also distributed in storeless distribution, property, traditional distribution, 3C (Gome, etc.), supermarkets and many brand image counters and stores across the country. In other words, as long as consumers want to buy smart door locks, they can see Cadiz in any way.
In addition to C-end channels, Cadiz also cooperates with B-end real estate developers. It has not only reached long-term strategic cooperative relations with dozens of leading real estate enterprises such as Vanke Group, Country Garden, China Overseas Real Estate, China Resources Land, Gemdale Real Estate, etc., but also ranked first in the industry with a brand preference rate of 18%, and won the "Top 500 Preferred Supplier Brands of China's Real Estate Development Enterprises" for five consecutive years.
From the perspective of achievements, in the development process of Cadiz for more than ten years, it has continuously won customer recognition by virtue of its own technical advantages. When the market space of an industry continues to expand, the influx of new players is an inevitable trend, and in the fierce competition, the enterprise role is sometimes one of the competitors; and when it passes the 0 to 1 stage of intensive cultivation, with the continuous strengthening of technology research and development strength and manufacturing capabilities, the enterprise role may no longer be just a competitor, but a technology holder that is difficult to shake.
The process of the industry gradually changing from blue ocean to red ocean is a fierce environment that insiders need to face, but at the same time, the injection of fresh blood is also a recognition of the prospects of the smart lock industry. The joint promotion and exploration of many parties, such as the traffic gene of the Internet, the brand gene of cross-border players, and the technical background of professional lock enterprises, can be combined to accelerate industry education and make smart lock products perceived by more users.
When the training in the domestic market tends to stabilize, Cadiz is also exploring the layout of overseas markets. At present, Cadiz has successively opened up overseas markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North America, and has reached strategic cooperation with more than 10 international enterprises. Channels include Amazon, eBay, local e-commerce and other to C platforms, as well as B to C methods of regional agents and national agents.
Whether it is to open the market from product strength, or to continuously broaden its own channel selection and strengthen brand building, Cadiz has long been running on the road of exploration of smart door locks with a way of trotting and accurate decision-making, and such a marathon runner form and the long-term value behind it have become the reason why capital is constantly willing to raise.
In the process of technological development, it is often accompanied by trial and error or stumbling, but the craftsmanship itself is the permanent password that can open the smart door lock of technological progress. Ultimately, the real technology approach is insensible, as Macchey Kranz said in The Age of the Internet of Things, "When we stop talking about the Internet of Things as a unique phenomenon, but simply integrate the Internet of Things into our daily business and lives, then we can be sure that the Internet of Things has succeeded." ”
Just like today, there is no longer a need to take the keys out of the door and the home that always has a password.